Finishing Up My Haute Couture Construction Class

Goodness, where has the time gone?!

My Haute Couture Construction Class at FIT, which started at the end of August, finishes this coming Tuesday (December 18).  I've enjoyed it quite a bit, even though I was a little disappointed at first that we'd all be making the same skirt and jacket in the same size.  Fortunately it's a size that fits my cousin Cathy (more or less) and I hope she'll be willing to model this raspberry wool tweed ensemble for you sometime soon.

You may recall that we started with the straight skirt, which has three decorative exterior darts on each side, side pockets, and a back slit.  It also has a wide (4" at its widest) shaped waistband which is fully lined with my heavy poly-blend lining material I purchased at Metro Textiles (the wool tweed is from Mood).

As you can see in the top pic, the waistband has two hook-and-eye closures as well as belt loops that lie flat when the skirt is being worn but are loose enough to hang on a hanger when not being worn.

After we finished the skirt, we started on the jacket.  Below is Kenneth King's finished sample.  The jacket is completely interlined with hair canvas, including the sleeves (yes, I know: it makes for rather stiff sleeves).  The front edges meet at center front and there are no closures nor are there pockets.  Below the waistline the jacket flares quite dramatically.

Kenneth King didn't create the syllabus for the course, nor the pattern (unfortunately). 

I used a lightweight hair canvas throughout.  Due to the thickness of my fabric, rather than create a balanced dart, I cut mine open in the center, trimmed away the extra hair canvas, pressed, and stitched down the dart edges to keep things neat.  Same for all the seam allowances.  This can be done with a catch stitch or a pad-type stitch that keeps things in place equally well but uses less thread.
 

Needless to say, all pressing done from the right side is done with a press cloth.  Mine is a piece of silk organza.

The facings are reinforced with both hair canvas and layers of hair cloth: the stiffness is necessary to keep the shape of the standing collar.  In addition, there are shaping darts at the top of the facings, as well as a separate shaped back neck facing piece.

After attaching the facings, we sewed on the sleeves, shoulder pads (purchased), and sleeve heads (we made these ourselves out of our fashion fabric).

I originally lined my sleeves with the same lining I used for the skirt and the rest of the jacket but it proved too thick, so I replaced it with some poly charmeuse from my stash.  I kicked myself for not doing this from the get-go since I had a feeling the thick poly wouldn't work.  Oh, well...

On the left, the original sleeve lining; on the right, the thinner off-white charmeuse.

I wasn't sure what kind of cuff buttons I wanted (on this jacket they are only decorative, not functional). I ended up using a vintage Dritz kit to make covered buttons.

There's still pressing to be done but here's a peek at how the outfit looks so far.

And that's it!   Hopefully I'll have a photo shoot to share before year's end.

Happy sewing, everybody!